By Gary Lee
Weather has certainly been the hot topic on the news as the east coast got yet another snow storm and temperatures ranging from single digits to well below zero.
It was -24 here this morning (2/16) with a strong wind so it was lower with the wind chill factor.
I took a two-mile walk in the woods yesterday and it was mighty cold. When I got back to the truck my mustache and beard were completely covered with ice from the moisture of my breath. I never saw or heard a bird during this walk.
Last week while I was out walking I saw where a pine marten had chased a hare back and forth across the trail for over a mile.
At first I only saw the hare track as the marten was saving energy by jumping right in its prints.
Every once in a while I saw two prints in between tracks and thought it was the hare just putting down its front feet between hops.
As I went farther up the trail, I saw where this marten was on the hunt. Its tracks criss-crossed the trail several times till the hare tracks appeared. Then there were no marten tracks.
I finally connected the two when the hare got on my snowshoe track and stayed on it for more than half a mile.
It crossed a big bridge on my track but the marten traveled on the planks on the side of the bridge then got back on the hare track.
It went right to my truck and continued right down the road. I don’t know how the chase came out but there was a hare track near that spot the next time I came so I have to guess it survived the chase.
When I parked there yesterday there was a bobcat track coming off the snow bank into the road and no new hare tracks so maybe the hare was lunch for another predator.
While out checking traps on some back roads I saw where three deer came out into the road and ran over four miles.
I think they were being pursued by a coyote and there was no escape by jumping the bank into three feet of snow.
Karen and I went down to the Log Jam restaurant south of Lake George on Friday to have lunch with high school friends. They have their share of snow down that way.
We went along the Hudson River on River Road north of Warrensburg to see how much ice was backed up in the river.
It is piled quite high and still building so this will be a sore spot for residents along there when the thaw does come.
In the past I have seen ice sheets right up in the yards in that area. The road was closed a few times when the flush came in the spring.
Along the north side of the river between North River and North Creek I saw where some beavers had been out eating along the shore line.
There was also a big flock of turkeys sunning themselves along the river.
I saw them at the same spot several years ago when turkeys were first making inroads in the north country.
They were some of the first birds to make my backyard bird count…along with the ravens I saw in Indian Lake when we drove through.
The Great Backyard Bird Count is over today. Reports at the half-way point were nearly double those of last year’s…but that’s another story. See ya.